


Through The Thorns and Foul Weather

by Nevanna



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 16:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3454538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments from Scott and Ororo's friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through The Thorns and Foul Weather

**Author's Note:**

> This story assumes canon knowledge through X2 (and does _not_ assume the changes that took place in _Days of Future Past_ ). It was written for the Hurt/Comfort Bingo February Challenge: to incorporate four prompts (including a "wild card" prompt of my choice) into a single work. My prompts were: "ostracized from society" (my wild card), "invisibility," "coma," and "branding."
> 
> The title of the story is from "Sing" by Catie Curtis.

1.

When Scott first met Ororo, she had sometimes called down lightning when she was angry. Years later, when the words “mutant registration” started filling news reports and political Web sites, he could feel the air in the room becoming heavy with pent-up electrical energy as they discussed strategy and – inevitably – worst-case scenarios with Jean and Professor Xavier.

“What are we going to tell the children?” Ororo demanded after the meeting was over. “We let them believe that they would be safe here.”

“They will be.” Even as he spoke, Scott was already imagining the measures that the government would take to expose and control mutants, including the ones who had the soundest of reasons for not wanting to be found. Some of their students had tangled with the authorities, and too many of them had fled from abusive homes.

Ororo wasn’t reassured, and didn’t seem to want to be. Instead of trying, Scott asked if she wanted to spar with him in the Danger Room. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that he could feel the pressure in the air ease by a fraction. “I would like that,” she said.

2.

Every once in a while, stress, fear, or anger would cause one or more of the students to lose control over their powers. Sometimes this led to icicles forming on the furniture, or the injured party literally climbing the nearest wall and refusing to come down for the rest of the evening.

Scott happened to be nearby when Danielle, who had arrived two weeks earlier, lost her temper at one of her classmates, and whatever he was about to say to either of them was forgotten as the familiar corridor faded around him.

Ororo was the one to shake him out of the illusion, to remind him in a low but urgent voice that none of it was real, just as he was reaching for his sunglasses. As he caught his breath, she knelt down next to Danielle and the boy with whom she had been arguing, asking them both if they knew where they were.

“Danielle can create images of people’s worst fears,” she told Scott that evening. “I told her that we wouldn’t force her to leave, and I think she believes me.”

“Did she make you see anything?”

“The past,” Ororo said tersely. “What about you?”

He had been trying to warn Jean of approaching danger, but she hadn’t seemed to see or hear him no matter how loudly he shouted. He’d been completely invisible. “Something that could happen.” Ororo put a hand on his arm, and didn’t ask him to say more.

3.

Scott slipped into the medical bay to find Ororo as he’d left her: sitting quietly beside Professor Xavier’s unconscious body. “Someone did this to him,” she said, without looking up. “You know that, right?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea of who it was, too," Scott said grimly. “And I know that he'd want us to do everything that we could to stop them.”

“And what if we do, and we rescue Rogue… and he still doesn’t wake up?”

“I don’t have an answer for that.” Almost everybody who called this school home, including the two of them, had a story about how the professor had found them and shown them that they weren’t alone. If he didn’t recover, Scott would have to tell them the news; he couldn’t imagine placing that burden on anybody else. “Go and get some rest while you can, Storm. That’s an order.”

4.

The mark of Stryker’s needle was clearly visible on the back of Scott’s neck, but only a handful of people knew what it truly meant.

It was clear that Ororo was one of those people. “Whatever he made you do,” she said quietly, “it wasn’t your fault.”

“So I’ve been told.” Scott didn’t care how bitter he sounded. She might have meant well, but she would never know how it had felt when somebody else had moved his body like fingers inside a glove; when he saw his own hand lift toward his visor and was sick with the knowledge that he would turn the full force of his power against Jean; when he embraced her and whispered her name one more time, as himself, only to lose her again.

“You don’t have to believe it,” Ororo went on. “But I still wanted to say it.”

5.

In her desk drawer, Jean had kept a photo of herself, Ororo, and Scott, taken the day that she had graduated from medical school. When he was sorting through her things, a process that he both wished he never had to finish and hoped to finish as soon as possible, he set the print aside. Even he wasn’t sure to do with many of her belongings, but he thought that image might be one that Ororo would like to keep.


End file.
